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Self-sufficient   /sˈɛlfsəfˈɪʃənt/  /sˈɛlfsəfˈɪʃɪnt/   Listen
Self-sufficient

adjective
1.
Able to provide for your own needs without help from others.  Synonyms: self-sufficing, self-sustaining.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Self-sufficient" Quotes from Famous Books



... speculative understanding contemplating for contemplation's sake. This act has all the marks of happiness. It is the highest act of man's highest power. It is the most capable of continuance. It is fraught with pleasure, purest and highest in quality. It is of all acts the most self-sufficient and independent of environment, provided the object be to the mind's eye visible. It is welcome for its own sake, not as leading to any further good. It is a life of ease and leisure: man is busy that he may come ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... fool to say so. D' you think I haven't watched the young brute these many years? Self-sufficient, ignorant, hot-headed, always in the wrong. What d' you find to praise in the clown? Look at his life. Failure! failure! failure! and making of enemies at every turn. Where would he be to-day but ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... puff up, turn up, turn one's head. Adj. vain, vain as a peacock, proud as a peacock; conceited, overweening, pert, forward; vainglorious, high-flown; ostentatious &c 882; puffed up, inflated, flushed. self-satisfied, self-confident, self-sufficient, self-flattering, self-admiring, self-applauding, self-glorious, self-opinionated; entente &c (wrongheaded) 481; wise in one's own conceit, pragmatical^, overwise^, pretentious, priggish; egotistic, egotistical; soi-disant &c (boastful) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... great classes: those arts, like sculpture, painting, acting, which are representative, or, as used to be said very clumsily, imitative; and those, like architecture, music, and the dance, which are self-sufficient, and merely presentative. Each class, in right of this distinction, obeys principles apart; yet both may claim a common ground of existence, and it may be said with sufficient justice that the motive and end of any art whatever is to make a pattern; a ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to try getting at some of that water frozen in the Saturnian System. Altogether, I see no end to the jobs. It's no good our depending on Earth for anything. Too expensive, too chancy. The Belt has to be made completely self-sufficient." ...
— Industrial Revolution • Poul William Anderson

... deep yearning for love, she never spoke. Just when she would begin to feel almost self-sufficient it would quicken to a throbbing ache. Usually, at such times, she buried it determinedly under work. But one day, yielding to an impulse, she wrote to Norah asking if her little namesake could come ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius

... with intellect and will and freedom, God is a PERSON; and a LIVING person also, for He is both object and subject of his own activity, and to be this distinguishes the living from the lifeless. He is thus absolutely SELF-SUFFICIENT: his SELF-KNOWLEDGE and SELF-LOVE are both of them infinite and adequate, and need no extraneous conditions to ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... thing clear to the modern mind it is that science has no room in its theory of things for an over-ruling intelligence. Sir Oliver Lodge well sums up the attitude of science in the following sentences:—"Orthodox science shows us a self-contained and self-sufficient universe, not in touch with anything above or beyond itself—the general trend and outline of it known—nothing supernatural or miraculous, no intervention of beings other than ourselves, being conceived possible." (Man and the Universe, p. 14, Popular ed.) Personally, we question whether there ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen

... characteristic, not confined to any age or place, but always accompany the young convert to godliness, as the shadow does the substance. Christian is firm, decided, bold, and sanguine. Obstinate is profane, scornful, self-sufficient, and contemns God's Word. Pliable is yielding, and easily induced to engage in things of which he understands neither the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... register where all persons who call inscribe their names, and I was surprised to notice the number of Americans present in Paris. It only proved what I long had heard, that Americans take more naturally to the French than to the sturdy, self-sufficient Englishman. As it is in the matter of fashions, so it is regarding almost everything else, save morals, and I doubt if the tone of fashionable society in New York is any better than ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett

... think again of Vienna without picturing that stranded girl, sipping at her reddish drink in the Amerikan-bar in the Kaisergarten. But her case is typical. The Viennese are not hospitable to strangers. They are an intimate, self-sufficient people. ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright

... and all export duties were abolished. The official went over the ship, and the arrangement of her accommodations ought to have been enough to convince the man that the vessel was a pleasure yacht. The self-sufficient officer retreated in good order when he had completed his examination, leaving a subordinate on board to see that no merchandise was landed. The latter was a gentlemanly person, spoke English, and was disposed to make himself ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic

... had his good points. He was brave as a lion; strictly honourable; and though very ignorant, and very self-sufficient, had that sort of dogged good sense which one very often finds in men of stern hearts, who, if they have many prejudices, ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... for 5% of GDP; expanding output of cotton, fruits, vegetables, and livestock; other crops - bananas, coconuts, cucumbers, mangoes, sugarcane; not self-sufficient in food ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... Marcia, as days went by, proved to be a sweet-tempered, somewhat timid, but highly good-natured, affectionate creature generously offering her good-will; and Rogers, the lawyer, and Farris, the artist, both of the sophisticated, self-sufficient type, were little behind ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory

... that no longer existed. The professional hunters no longer had markets for their furs, since Anvhar possessed no interstellar ships of its own. There had been no real physical hardship involved in the Breakdown as it affected Anvhar, since the planet was completely self-sufficient. Once they had made the mental adjustment to the fact that they were now a sovereign world, not a collection of casual visitors with various loyalties, life continued unchanged. Not easy—living on Anvhar is never easy—but at least ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison

... the Government, debased and denuded of whatever dignity they once possessed, ascribe what cause you will for their present condition. But the Pueblo Indian has absolutely maintained the integrity of his individuality, and is self-respecting and self-sufficient. He accepted the form of religion professed by his Spanish conquerors, but without abandoning his own, and that is practically the only concession his persistent conservatism has ever made to ...
— My Native Land • James Cox

... exclusive, self-sufficient, self-contained. Therefore, the national State is the supreme and final political reality ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... fascinatedly at the book for a minute. Then his hand went out and he was once more turning the pages of neat, close writing. Of course, he wouldn't really do a thing like that, but—well, it would solve a mighty big problem! And what a hole that self-sufficient Upton would be in! He couldn't prove that he had left the book in Mr. Daley's study, at least not unless the instructor had seen it there; and somehow Steve was pretty sure he hadn't. Of course a decent chap wouldn't do a trick like that, only—well, it would certainly ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour

... that Dick, if communicative, was not impressionable, and that the closeness of texture which enabled him to throw off her sarcasms preserved him also from the infiltration of her prejudices. He was certainly no knight of the apron-string, but a seemingly resolute and self-sufficient young man, whose romantic friendship with his mother had merely served to throw a veil of suavity over the hard angles ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton

... the world of reason and the world of sensation, between probative argument and the guess-work of sense-impressions. The former is the world of Being, the world of that which truly is, self-existent, uncreated, unending, unmoved, unchanging, ever self-poised and self-sufficient, like a sphere. [98] Knowledge is of this, and of this only, and as such, knowledge is identical with its object; for outside this known reality there is nothing. In other words, Knowledge can only be of that which is, and that which is ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall

... consolation, I tell you, that you do not need me. In our happiest moments a suspicion of this truth used to lacerate me. But now it is my one comfort in the doom that divides us. See how you stand up here above the world, alone and self-sufficient. No woman could ever have more than the second place ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill

... Hodgson, which one would hardly suspect after reading his outdoor verse. The lamplit silence of the library is as charming to him as the fragrant silence of the woods. He is as much of a recluse among books as he is among flowers. No poet of today seems more self-sufficient. Although a lover of humanity, he seems to require no companionship. He is no more lonely than a cat, and has as many resources as Tabby herself. Now when he talks about books, his poetry becomes intimate, and forsakes all objectivity. ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... any sharp line of demarcation between them. And here we see that hallucination differs from illusion only in the proportion in which the causes are present. When the internal imaginative impulse reaches a certain strength, it becomes self-sufficient, or ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully

... doctrines of grace, free-will, predestination, reprobation, justification, &c. you will be more entertained, and will believe less, than if I told your majesty a long story of fairies and goblins. You are an eternal prater, said the emperor, and very self-sufficient; but talk your fill, and upon what subject you like till tomorrow morning; but I swear by the soul of the holy Jirigi, who rode to heaven on the tail of a magpie, as soon as the clock strikes eight, you are a dead woman. Well, ...
— Hieroglyphic Tales • Horace Walpole

... Prosperous men like to talk of their early struggles and poverty. This feast teaches that such remembrance ought always to trace the better present to God, and that memory of conquered sorrows and trials is wholesome only when it is devout, and that the joy of present ease is bracing, not when it is self-sufficient, but when it is thankful. The past, rightly looked at, will yield for us all materials for a feast of tabernacles; and it is rightly looked at only when it is all seen as God's work, and as tending to settled ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... international ties, Tirane has reestablished diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and the US. The Albanians have also passed legislation allowing foreign investment. Albania possesses considerable mineral resources and, until 1990, was largely self-sufficient in food; several years of drought have hindered agricultural development. Numerical estimates of Albanian economic activity are subject to an especially wide margin of error because the government until recently did not release ...
— The 1991 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... were not more easily stained than ours, (7) you would find that Nature's work is as complete in them as in ourselves. But not daring to take the pleasure they desire, they have exchanged that vice for a greater, which they deem more honourable, I mean a self-sufficient cruelty, whereby they look to ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... purling Stream are all Things that's necessary to give us an Idea of the tender Passion. This is a Theme, therefore, which, while I make choice to write of, frees me from the Imputation of vain or self-sufficient:—None can tax me with having too great an Opinion of my own Genius, when I aim at nothing but what the meanest may perform. "I have nothing to value myself on, but ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher

... are sham. Each little fault of temper and each social defect In my erring fellow-creatures, I endeavour to correct. To all their little weaknesses I open people's eyes; And little plans to snub the self-sufficient I devise; I love my fellow creatures — I do all the good I can— Yet ev'rybody says I'm such a disagreeable man! ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan

... hour of his wife's death Simeon Pratt had been but the business-man, large of appetite, pitiless, self-sufficient, and self-absorbed—the type of man often described by amiable critics as "a hard citizen, but good to his family, you know," as if the fact of his not beating his wife were ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... ostentatious efficiency annoyed those who took their own work more lightly, and, if they foretold his advancement, it was not altogether sympathetically. Indeed, he appeared to be rather a hard and self-sufficient young man, with a queer temper, and manners that were uncompromisingly abrupt, who was consumed with a desire to get on in the world, which was natural, these critics thought, in a man of no means, but ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... self-government, to pelt 'em to a pulp with facts! You've got to get 'em if you take them by the scruff of the neck, Miss MacDonald! While the churches and the teachers and the preachers sit back self-superior and self-sufficient, Miss MacDonald, where's the crowd? They're out in the street! You've got to get 'em! You've got to get the facts before 'em! People curse the yellow journals! All right! But they reach an audience of ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... which Edward had been the innocent means. In vain did Dick endeavour to make himself the peace-offering to his father's wounded consequence; in vain was it manifest that Fanny was grieved: the old Major persisted in declaring that Edward O'Connor was a self-sufficient jackanapes, and forbade most peremptorily that further intercourse should take place between him and his daughter; and she had too high a sense of duty, and he of honour, to seek to violate the command. But though they never met, they loved not ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover

... study, therefore, must be of interest as an analysis of the working of purely social forces in a small population, in which the whole process may be observed, more closely than in the intricate and subtle evolution of a larger, more self-sufficient ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson

... Amos Brown died twenty-eight years ago, being survived by a son and grandson. The son died a short time later. Amos Brown the third, had no kin. But he was a self-sufficient youngster who managed pretty well. He entered the flying service in the World War and ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew

... began in the early and ended in the middle eighties—I see the charm of ingenuous youth stamped on the episode, the touching glamour of limitless faith and expectation. We were, the whole little band of us, so deliciously self-sufficient, so magnificently critical of established reputations in contemporary letters and art. We sniffed and snorted, noses in air, at popular idols, while ourselves weighted down with a cargo of guileless enthusiasm only asking opportunity to dump itself at an idol's feet. ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... senses, your ardent aspirations for a better state of things, your courageous contempt of many degrading and servile customs, to which woman is condemned; yes, now I understand the noble pride with which you contemplate the mob of vain, self-sufficient, ridiculous men, who look upon woman as a creature destined for their service, according to the laws made after their own not very handsome image. In the eyes of these hedge-tyrants, woman, a kind of inferior being to whom a council of cardinals deigned to grant a soul by a majority ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... They try to make life profitable and pleasant to their children and their servants. To the poor they are patronizing and benevolent. Apart from their overflowing sentimentality they are honest, self-sufficient, commonplace people. Rousseau, born in the middle class, had a middle-class, respectable ideal, lying beside many very different ideals in his ill-ordered brain. And this novel which begins with passion ends with something not far removed ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... our Moonland have no life like yours, No birth, no death: we live but in our dreams: And when they are grown old—these mortal visions Of an immortal sleep—we seem to lose them. They are too strong for us, too self-sufficient To live for us; they go their ways and leave us, Like shadows ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt

... development.[101] Therefore, leaving Berlin, and laying down my office, I began late in the autumn of 1816 that educational work which, though it still takes its impulse from me and exists under my leadership, yet in its deepest nature is self-sufficient and self-conditioned. ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel

... with green points and shoots. And the old monk said, "This is a strange tale, Lord Robert, that you have told me; and the wonder grows as I think of it; but it seems to me that God has led you in a wonderful manner; He made you strong and bold and self-sufficient; and then He has taken these things from you, not gently, because you were strong to bear, but very sternly; He has led you through deep waters and yet you live; and He will set you upon the rock that is higher, so that you ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Brand, Parsifal, or Don Quixote. If the selves are too unrelated, we distrust the man; if they are too inflexibly on one track we find him arid, stubborn, or eccentric. In the repertory of characters, meager for the isolated and the self-sufficient, highly varied for the adaptable, there is a whole range of selves, from that one at the top which we should wish God to see, to those at the bottom that we ourselves do not dare to see. There may be octaves for the family,—father, Jehovah, tyrant,—husband, ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... child of Italy, that land of gluttons. And finally, you have myself, who as the father of the company very properly play as Pantaloon the roles of father. Sometimes, it is true, I am a deluded husband, and sometimes an ignorant, self-sufficient doctor. But it is rarely that I find it necessary to call myself other than Pantaloon. For the rest, I am the only one who has a name—a real ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... pine-root hole, was afterward very coolly taken by a self-sufficient young skunk who with less valor might have enjoyed greater longevity, for he imagined—that even man with a gun would fly from him. Instead of keeping Molly from the den for good, therefore, his reign, like that of a certain Hebrew king, ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton

... assured that it was to be for his permanent good. He was a newspaper man not from choice, but because in that field he could earn his daily bread. Behind all he was conscious of great capability—not vain or by any means self-sufficient, but certain that by study and endeavor he could take high rank in the literary world and could win a place of lasting distinction. So he stipulated that he should be given a column of his own, that he might stand or fall by the excellence of ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... of this word is Aja. Now, Aja literally means that which has no birth, and is applied to the Eternal Brahma in certain portions of the Upanishads. So, the first sign is intended to represent Parabrahma, the self-existent, eternal, self-sufficient cause ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... the evidence in hand concerning his contention and that of his family with the Archdeacon, the strong testimony that Cushman bears against him in his Dartmouth letter of August 17, and the fact that there seems to have been early dissatisfaction with him as "governor" on the ship, a very self-sufficient, somewhat arrogant, and decidedly contentious individual. His selection as treasurer seems to have been very unfortunate, as Bradford indicates that his accounts were in unsatisfactory shape, and that he had no means of his own, ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames

... understand that successful politics demands a "machine." Each of its individual members is a boss. They have been derisively termed "goo-goos," which is a contraction of "goody-goods." They are youthful, sanguine, patriotic, impertinent, impractical and self-sufficient. Their idea of conducting a campaign is nebulous. They believe that a number of voluble young men, clad irreproachably in evening dress and touring the city in carts after nightfall, stopping on corners and haranguing the multitude, cannot fail to command success. They have a large campaign fund, ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... man; he was more, he was a profound egotist. In his character pride, the love of power, the desire for wealth, were evenly balanced and made subservient to a most indomitable will. Those who knew him well said he was a hard self-sufficient man, one who never forgot an injury or ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... conditions and terms of railway transportation ought not be permitted to increase this undesirable tendency. We have a just pride in our great cities, but we shall find a greater pride in the Nation, which has it larger distribution of its population into the country, where comparatively self-sufficient smaller communities may blend agricultural and manufacturing interests in harmonious helpfulness and enhanced good fortune. Such a movement contemplates no destruction of things wrought, of investments ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Warren Harding • Warren Harding

... wholly within the competence of human resources, is displeasing in grave discussions: grave they are by necessity of their relations, howsoever momentarily disfigured by levity and the unseasonable grimaces of self-sufficient "philosophy." This temper of mind is already advertised from the first to the observing reader of Van Dale by the character of his engraved frontispiece. Men are there exhibited in the act of juggling, and still more odiously as exulting over their juggleries by gestures ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey

... long as she spoke herself, and so she harangued away. Meanwhile Mr. Melmoth, the Pliny Melmoth, as he is called, was of the party, and seemed to think nobody half so great as himself. He seems intolerably self-sufficient—appears to look upon himself as the first man in Bath, and has a proud conceit in look and manner, mighty forbidding.' Mme. D'Arblay's ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... Cowan's eyes testified that he was again the self-sufficient commander, confident of his decisions and determined upon his ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke

... an absolute death, since he wedded only the maidenly spirit, to be one flesh with him, [H in H, F against F, etc.] and by so doing changed it into his own pure manhood. [Humanity.] And this is the generation or birth to an actively self-sufficient being, which rises out of the old one. For just as the grain of wheat perishes or dies in the earth and comes into a new life, just so it goes also with the arising and the growing up of the new creation, which in truth is Christ our life, whose appearance will put an end to the sins in us. ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer

... A self-contained and self-sufficient girl, she now felt lonesomely that it would be a great comfort to talk everything over with somebody. Things seemed only to get worse by being kept locked up so tight in her own bosom. Everything was changing so, just in a little while; you could not go ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... blundered about slowly and awkwardly, he looked with wonder and admiration at the ease and facility with which his teacher and the other men did their work. They were so calm, so precise, and so self-sufficient. He wondered if he would ever be like them, and felt very hopeless as the question presented ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... down at his intelligent face and hoped he would come. Selfish, conceited, and self-sufficient as I may be, there is a strand of weakness made up in my composition that forces me to find the companionship ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross

... small groups, and hence independent and markedly individualist. Such historians divide even these rude tribes sharply between the patriarchal and the particularist. The particularist commune developed from the estate which was self-sufficient, isolated, and independent. When they were associated together it was for special and limited purposes, so that independence might be infringed upon to the least possible extent. The patriarchal commune, on ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... the compassion that is so much a part of your makeup. How can we love our country and not love our countrymen, and loving them, reach out a hand when they fall, heal them when they are sick, and provide opportunities to make them self-sufficient so they will be equal in fact and not just ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... commission, which was eagerly asked for, it has not been executed, and when I ask for an explanation,—I allude to the servant-maid, a quick girl, who, an't please you, has been a teacher in an English boarding-school,—dust is thrown up with a self-sufficient air, and I am obliged to appear to see her meaning clearly, though she puzzles herself, that I may not make her feel her ignorance; but you must have experienced the same thing. I will write to you ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell

... their entire being by two persons, each supplementing the defects of the other. Love, therefore, is friendship, with a differential addition. True love includes friendship, as the greater includes the smaller. Now, the self-sufficient character of man makes him seek a second I; that is, wish to see himself reflected in another. But the sympathetic character of woman makes her seek a not- I; that is, wish to see another reflected in herself. ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... answering questions about America. I think I am not exaggerating when I say I have answered a million in a single evening. My companion at first was disgusted with my wearing myself out in such a manner, but I said, "I am so grateful to them for caring, after the indifference of all these other self-sufficient countries, that I am willing to sacrifice ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell

... same ungovernable terror that restrained him from marrying, or whether he was the friend of too many women to be the lover of one, or whether he really was self-contained and self-sufficient, all this time he had remained single. His singleness had many advantages; it kept him free; it made it easy for him to get about from place to place and obtain an uninterrupted view of the world; it left an open way for his abrupt incalculable ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair

... touched by the honest confession. This did not seem the gay, self-sufficient young man he had met on former occasions. "I cannot pretend to criticise another man's life, knowing my own," he answered humbly. "I am sure I wish you all success ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith

... to that: knowing well what he contemplated, that all his plans were laid and serious mischance alone could prevent him from putting them into effect, feeling himself once more quick with the wanton, ruthless spirit of the Lone Wolf, invincibly self-sufficient, strong ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... marked me for his own, breathed into my heart a vapour of spiritual pride, which could only have had its source in his own infernal regions. I had risen as high in the church as before in the state. I was, forsooth, the wise, the self-sufficient, the impeccable!—I was the counsellor of councils—I was the director of prelates. How should I stumble?—wherefore should I fear temptation? Alas! I became confessor to a sisterhood, and amongst ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... just below the knee, Dr. Withers says—poor Joseph! He's been an ambitious boy. So anxious to get ahead, and so self-sufficient. I feel right guilty about Joseph." ...
— Stubble • George Looms

... of that Sex which is therefore called Fair; but the happy Concurrence of both these Excellencies in the same Person, is a Character too celestial to be frequently met with. Beauty is an over-weaning self-sufficient thing, careless of providing it self any more substantial Ornaments; nay so little does it consult its own Interests, that it too often defeats it self by betraying that Innocence which renders it lovely and desirable. As therefore Virtue makes a beautiful Woman appear ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... unfitness, may do more harm in his serene ignorance than he might have done good if he had chosen his proper sphere. Such a man as the last was the Reverend Harold. A good-natured, broad-shouldered, tactless, self-sufficient person, he had taken up his work with a complacent feeling that no field of labor could fail to be benefited by his patronage; he was content now as always. He had been content with himself and his intellectual progress at Oxford; he had been content ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... of population in the history of the world. This population is accustomed to a relatively high standard of life, in which, even now, some sections of it anticipate improvement rather than deterioration. In relation to other continents Europe is not self-sufficient; in particular it cannot feed Itself. Internally the population is not evenly distributed, but much of it is crowded into a relatively small number of dense industrial centers. This population secured for itself a livelihood before the war, without much margin of surplus, by ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes

... became difficult to go on with the programme of tearful consolation which had been prepared. There seemed hardly a place for sympathy, much less for tearful consolation, in this well-ordered home, and with these self-sufficient folk. ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor

... poet's conviction that a spirit not his own is inspiring him? Does he not rather feel self-sufficient as compared with the earlier singers, who expressed such naive dependence upon the Muse? We have been using the name Muse in this essay merely as a figure of speech, and is this not the poet's usage when he addresses her? The casual reader ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... brotherhood of empire, quickened by that dramatic S.O.S. call for men across the sea and cemented by the common trench hazard, be followed by a union of empire after the war that should be self-sufficient. Behind all this eloquent talk of protection and prohibition lay the first real menace to America's new place as a world trade power. It was the opening call to arms for the war ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson

... summer woods, that sinks into the wintry sea, yet are they brothers. The severe loneliness that has sun and moon in its bosom invites us as the vigorous health of the soul. The beautiful isolation of the rose in its own fragrance is self-sufficient. ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke

... first performance, on March 21, 1826, was received with indifference, and the finale, which was an exceedingly long and difficult fugue, fared even worse. Self-sufficient as Beethoven was on all matters connected with the working out of his musical thoughts, he coincided for once with his friends and the publisher on the matter of the fugue. He wrote a new finale for ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer

... way. He saw clearly what a field lay open to him in the drawing-room, and the delightful company of Ottawa's elite. All he had to do was to introduce himself to this "tony" little city fashionably dressed, and with that self-sufficient reserve that characterizes the "high toned." He registered at the "Russell," and walked Sparks street every afternoon with a haughty step, looking as conceited and interesting as possible. He drank in the ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... perfect understanding; at the first lifting of the eyes in wonder there is a jar which by and by must make the whole emotion restless. An unconquerable curiosity lay at the very root of their lives. She thought him English and self-sufficient; he thought her foreign and a little superstitious. This ineffable criticism was constant, fretful, and ever nearing the climax of uttered reproach. Sara had inherited all the amazement, but she owned, as well, its comprehension. She adored passionately the mother she had ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... is a faithless, unworthy servant, who becomes proud and self-sufficient with property which belongs to me, and which he has stolen. And, therefore, am I about to change this impudent minister's fete into a sorrow and mourning, of which the nymph of Vaux, as the poets say, shall ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas

... the numbers down to some extent; but Greek battles were not as a rule very bloody, and every healthy nation has a surprising capacity of making good the losses caused by war. The first effect of the check to emigration was that the old ideal of the 'self-sufficient life,' which meant the practice of mixed farming, had to be partially abandoned. The most flourishing States, and especially Athens, had to take to manufactures, which they exchanged for the food-products of the Balkan States and South Russia. ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... has reestablished diplomatic relations with the former Soviet Union and the US and has joined the IMF and World Bank. The Albanians have also passed legislation allowing foreign investment. Albania possesses considerable mineral resources and, until 1990, was largely self-sufficient in food; however, the breakup of cooperative farms in 1991 and general economic decline forced Albania to rely on foreign aid to maintain adequate supplies. Available statistics on Albanian economic ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... great Venetian painters and martial doges to that period of faith and stone-cutting. What was done then might be beautiful, but the life was monotonous; she insisted that it was Huguenot; harsh, nasal, sombre, insolent, self-sufficient. Her eyes lightened for the flashing colours and pageantries, and the threads of desperate adventure crossing the Rii to this and that palace-door and balcony, like faint blood-streaks; the times of Venice in full flower. She reasoned against the hard eloquent ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... grew, mushroom-like, overnight—garish husks of squalor, palpitating, hardy, a-tingle with extravagant hopes. A few, it is true, lived to become substantial cities buzzing with the American spirit, panting, fighting for progress with an energy that shamed the Old World, lethargic in its smug and self-sufficient superiority. But many towns died in their gangling youth, tragic monuments to hopes; but monuments also to effort, and to the pioneer courage and the dreams of an ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... many wonderful things; It has altered our views of Kaisers and Kings, And quite discounted the stern rebukes Of those who anathematized Grand Dukes. It has hurled from many a lofty pinnacle The self-sufficient and the cynical; And revised the judgments we once held true In various ways that are strange and new. For instance, the other day there came To see me, the same yet not the same, A former office boy, whom once I wholly misread as a Cockney dunce, Who only cared for music-hall ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various

... of being preposterously and prejudicially placed behind, it had been evidently better; forasmuch as the human shin-bone could not then have been so easily broken,—Dr. Moreton's Beauty of the Human Structure, page 62.—What a pity it is that these two learned and self-sufficient authors, were not consulted in the formation of their own persons: doubtless they could have suggested many improvements, and would have felt all the advantages with due effect—probably they might have liked their heads to screw on and off like Saint Denis, of France, who frequently carried ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various

... was too self-sufficient and opinionated to be influenced by the advice of friends or the warning of those who had suddenly become his enemies. He had so often carried the town to his own views, that, perhaps, he expected to manufacture ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic

... indeed, a visionary, a mystic, and a Christian; none of which names can be truly applied to Milton. And if we wish to find Love enjoying his just supremacy in poetry, we cannot do better than seek him among the lyrists of the Court of Charles II. Milton, self-sufficient and censorious, denies the name of love to these songs of the sons of Belial. Love, he says, reigns ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... contrary, are one of the modern aids to domesticity and preventives of gadding, while still keeping one not only in touch with a friend but within range of the voice. Surely there can be no woman so self-sufficient that she does not in silent moments yearn for a spoken word with one of ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... not keep you, son," she said weakly. "You ought to go to Kathryn. No filial duty toward me, dear! I'm a terribly self-sufficient woman." ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock

... she waited, a sudden vision came before her eyes—and her heart, which had been in a tumult at his first words, grew calm and cold. She saw, not the impassioned, tender man on the bridge, speaking in low, musical tones of love and devotion and his need of her; but the strong, self-sufficient, young chairman in his office of the Municipal League—the man who had seemed to her to have the least comprehension of the complex modern woman of anyone ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow

... comparison our modern monotheism is cold, abstract, mechanical. Instead of a radiant Apollo, we have the law of gravitation. We have lost the many fair gods of old to enrich One who is remote, unfathomable, self-sufficient. ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas

... quite mistook the aim of my Query about Crabbe: I asked if he were read in America for the very reason that he is not read in England. And in the October Cornhill is an Article upon him (I hope not by Leslie Stephen), so ignorant and self-sufficient that I am more wroth than ever. The old Story of 'Pope in worsted stockings'—why I could cite whole Paragraphs of as fine texture as Moliere—incapable of Epigram, the Jackanapes says of 'our excellent ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald

... a court which itself subsisted on the alms of another. Amidst such circumstances, extemporary gaiety cannot always be found. I can suppose, that the Duchess of Maine, who laid claim to the character of a patroness of wit, and, like many who assert such claims, was very troublesome, very self-sufficient, and very 'exigeante', might not always have found that general superiority, or even transient lustre, which she expected in Hamilton's society: yet, considering the great difference of their age and situation, this circumstance will not greatly impeach his ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... aware of the change in Ditmar, and knew the cause of it. Her feelings were complicated. He, the most important man in Hampton, the self-sufficient, the powerful, the hitherto distant and unattainable head of the vast organization known as the Chippering Mill, of which she was an insignificant unit, at times became for her just a man—a man for whom she ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... particular venture and turn my attention to other things. I have often wondered, in the light of their subsequent actions, why they should have become so pressing just at this time. At the same time, perhaps I was a little vain and self-sufficient. I had once got the better of some agents of another great financier in a Western Power deal, and I felt that I could put this thing through too. Hence I refused to heed the warning. However, I found that all those who were previously ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser

... collaborators produced another marvellous and inspired set of portieres. These were executed for the Grand Dauphin, to decorate his room in the chateau at Meudon, and were called the Grotesque Months in Bands. The most self-sufficient of pens would falter at a description of design so exquisite, which is arranged in three panels with a deity in each, a composition of extraordinary grace above and below them, and a bordering band of losenge or diaper, on which is set the royal double L and ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee

... so that it became a rational living soul, the one only-begotten universe, created the gods and the sons of the gods, and framed the soul to be the ruler of the body. Aristotle, in simpler phrase, represents the ground of the world as self-sufficient Mind, an eternal Power ([Greek: dunamis]), from which all action or ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy

... more, the doctor came in—a brisk, smiling, self-sufficient man—smartly dressed, with a flower in his button-hole. A stifling odor of musk filled the room, as he drew out his handkerchief with a flourish, and ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins

... the Church around one central principle, which he defended with marvellous logical power. He was not a fencer like Abelard, displaying wonderful dexterity in the use of sophistries, overwhelming adversaries by wit and sarcasm; arrogant and self-sufficient, and destroying rather than building up. He did not deify the reason, like Erigina, nor throw himself on authority like Bernard. He was not comprehensive like Augustine, nor mystical like Bonaventura. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... The self-sufficient physician, who did not expect such a repartee from a youth of Peregrine's appearance, looked upon his reply as a fair challenge, and instantly rehearsed forty or fifty lines of the Iliad in a breath. Observing that ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... is much more important than the navigators of lakes and oceans may suppose. In those almost currentless waters a steersman in any craft is usually self-sufficient, but among turbulent rapids, where rocks and shoals lie in all directions, and the deep-water track is tortuous, with, it may be, abrupt turnings here and there, a bowman is absolutely essential, and sometimes, indeed, may become the more ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... mother at home quietly placing the dishes on the supper-table, The mother with mild words, clean her cap and gown, a wholesome odor falling off her person and clothes as she walks by, The father, strong, self-sufficient, manly, mean, anger'd, unjust, The blow, the quick loud word, the tight bargain, the crafty lure, The family usages, the language, the company, the furniture, the yearning and swelling heart, Affection that will not be ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... earth, but the ignoble, the inglorious, the small put their petty obstacles in its way, and delayed the coming of the kingdom.... Men grew engrossed in their affairs, grew self-sufficient. A little money in their pockets, and God was forgotten. A little more and they despised their fellow-men, and hatred arose. And evil wars came, and years were lost.... Cunning men put the emotions, the ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne

... was a favor difficult for Belllounds to ask. The old rancher, dominant and forceful and self-sufficient all his days, had begun to feel an encroachment of opposition beyond his control. If he but realized it, the favor he asked of Wade was ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey

... pomp;—but good came not with her to anybody there. Not only did she bring the poor old man no children, which was a fault to be overlooked, considering Sophie Dorothee's success; but she brought a querulous, weak and self-sufficient female humor; found his religion heterodox,—he being Calvinist, and perhaps even lax-Calvinist, she Lutheran as the Prussian Nation is, and strict to the bone:—heterodox wholly, to the length of no salvation possible; and ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle

... the great red ears that stood out at right angles above it. But Obed was only a boy. He was not expected to be more than clean and speechless; and, to tell the truth, Eben, being in the hobbledehoy stage of boyhood—gaunt, awkward, and self-sufficient—rather surpassed his small brother in unpleasant aspect and manner. But who would look at the boys when Dolly stood beside them, as she did now, tall and slender, with the free grace of an untrammelled figure, her small head erect, her eyes dark and ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... been, blind to the great vision of the future, fettered by the chains of the past, gripped and held fast in the hand of the dead, a nation of traditionalists, unable to meet the needs of a new day, serene, no doubt self-sufficient, but coming how far short of realizing that ideal of those who praise their God for that they ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... was firmly convinced that England only contained one Stagholme, and perhaps he was right. Six miles from the nearest station, the great house stands self-sufficient, self-contained. The moat, now dry and cultivated, is still traceable, and requires bridging in two places. Surrounded by vast park-like meadowland, where huge trees guard against cutting wind or prying modern journalistic instinct, the house is only approached ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman

... herself back. So whether she would condescend to do private teaching, particularly here, in Beldover, I don't know. But it would be just the thing. Winifred has got a special nature. And if you can put into her way the means of being self-sufficient, that is the best thing possible. She'll never get on with the ordinary life. You find it difficult enough yourself, and she is several skins thinner than you are. It is awful to think what her life will be like ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... action cannot be a factor among factors; the Creator works through and in all creaturely action equally; we can never say 'This is the creature, and that is God' of distinguishable causalities in the natural world. The creature is, in its creaturely action, self-sufficient: but because a creature, insufficient to itself throughout, and sustained by its Creator both in ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... might expect from the self-sufficient Nupkins, who was evidently understood and laughed at by his fellow townsmen. Later, when the confusion and "row" grew fast and furious, our Mayor "issued imperative orders to twelve constables to seize the ringleaders, who might ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald

... and of 'content' is scarcely Paul's whole idea here, though that, no doubt, is included. We have no word which exactly expresses the meaning. 'Self-sufficient' is a translation, but then it has acquired a bad meaning as connoting a false estimate of one's own worth and wisdom. What Paul means is that whatever be his condition he has in himself enough to meet it. He does not depend on circumstances, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... paragraphs of the introduction, the words "I," "me," "my," occur forty-three times! I was dimly conscious of the accursed fact. He says it can be explained phrenologically, which I suppose civilly means, that I am the most egotistically self-sufficient man alive; perhaps so. I wonder whether he will print this pleasing fact; it beats hollow the parentheses in ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... which achieved these victories; it was the will and the reason of a noble race, in spite of its withering effects. It was the proud reason of man which soared to such lofty heights, and attempted to secure happiness and prosperity. These great ends were measurably attained, and a self-sufficient philosopher might have pointed to these victories as both glorious and permanent. When the eyes of contemporaries rested on the beautiful and cultivated face of nature, on commerce and ships, on military successes ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... fatal thirtieth of August, Pope, self-deluded and self-sufficient as before, dismayed his best officers by ordering his sixty-five thousand men to be "immediately thrown forward in pursuit of the enemy," whose own fifty thousand were now far readier ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood

... of the team, wrapping them tenderly in ancient sweaters when they were disabled, and watching every move of the game with a practised eye and an immobile countenance. But though to the eyes of the small fry on the grass at his feet he was as self-sufficient as ever, somehow he kept having strange qualms, and his mind kept reverting to the swart fat face of Pat at the Junction, as it ducked behind the cypress and talked into the crude telephone on the ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill

... of the House of Austria. The death of Mary of England, though it prevented Philip from availing himself of the men and money of his wife's kingdom, was rather beneficial to him, as chief of the Spanish dominion, than otherwise. What could he have done with the haughty, arrogant, self-sufficient islanders, who were as proud as the Castilians themselves, without any of the imperial pretensions of the Castilians to justify their pride, had Mary lived and reigned, while he alone should have ruled? There would have been civil war in England but for Mary's death, which occurred at a happy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various

... greater intelligibility, or to give up trying for it—which were the more gratifying alternative. So with the descriptions of symphonies we find in our programmes. Why should good music be translated into bad literature? Surely each art should be self-sufficient; developing its effects according to its own laws! A melody does not need to be painted, nor a picture to be set to music. The graceful evolutions of the dance are their own justification. The only case in which I would allow a ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... dared venture back to New York, they were certain, as matters stood, of instant arrest with the threatened alternative of either disgorging or of a criminal trial and possibly prison. To themselves they extenuated their thefts with the comforting and self-sufficient explanation that they had done to Vanderbilt precisely what he had done to others, and would have done to them. But it was not with themselves that the squaring had to be done, but with the machinery of law; Vanderbilt was exerting every effort to ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... Hilda as Mr. Cannon came into the room. The unconscious, expressive gesture, scornful and abrupt, with which she neglected them might have been terribly wounding to a young man more sensitive than Dayson. But Dayson, in his self-sufficient, good-natured mediocrity, had the hide of an alligator. He even judged her movement quite natural, for he was a flunkey born. Hilda gazed at her master with anxiety as he deposited his black walking-stick in the corner behind the door and loosed his white muffler and large overcoat (which Dayson ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... is holy. The Sabbath is the hub of the Jew's universe; to protract it is a virtue, to love it a liberal education. It cancels all mourning—even for Jerusalem. The candles may gutter out at their own greasy will—unsnuffed, untended—is not Sabbath its own self-sufficient light? ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... the heroic outburst, of natural virtue, as well as the yearnings of the heart after what it has not, and its presentiment of its true remedies, are to be ascribed to the Author of all good. Anticipations or reminiscences of His glory haunt the mind of the self-sufficient sage, and of the pagan devotee; His writing is upon the wall, whether of the Indian fane, or of the porticoes of Greece. He introduces Himself, He all but concurs, according to His good pleasure, and in His selected season, in the ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... brought about largely by a general lack of money in circulation. It was easily possible for entire families to subsist the year around on the fruits of land and water plus unexacting manual labor. Wealth was concentrated in the hands of the more important planters whose estates were usually self-sufficient and concentrating on trade with England. The natural bounty of the Tidewater region thus actually deterred the development of Virginia along the lines of New England with ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton

... ear; her aquiline comeliness pleased the eye without enticing it; her capable, fit-looking clothes were so happily secondary to her personality that even the women could not tell how she was dressed. She was the least seductive person imaginable; and she looked so self-sufficient that it seldom occurred to any one to offer her help. Yet she was in no sense bold or aggressive. No one ever thought of accusing her of being any of those things. Many loved her—loved her wholesomely, with a love in which trust was a large element. Children loved her, and the ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... scull, 25 Go home, and preach away at Hull, No longer to the Senate{5} cackle, In strains which suit the Tabernacle; I hate your little wittling sneer, Your pert and self-sufficient leer, 30 Mischief to Trade sits on thy lip, Insects will gnaw the noblest ship; Go, W———, be gone, for shame, Thou ...
— No Abolition of Slavery - Or the Universal Empire of Love, A poem • James Boswell

... necessary sequence of this preparation for war will be the desire of each nation to be self-sufficient—to produce within itself those materials indispensable for the waging of war. Capital will be wasted because each nation will store up quantities of these materials necessary to war which it is compelled to import from ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard

... stinted their growth, or the nature unable to cast it off. Miss Carmichael was a woman about six-and-twenty—and had been a woman, like too many Scotch girls, long before she was out of her teens—a human flower cut and dried—an unpleasant specimen, and by no means valuable from its scarcity. Self-sufficient, assured, with scarce shyness enough for modesty, handsome and hard, she was essentially a self-glorious Philistine; nor would she be anything better till something was sent to humble her, though ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... the primary economic activity, has steadily increased over the years and has brought a level of prosperity unusual among inhabitants of the Pacific islands. The agricultural sector has become self-sufficient in the production of beef, ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... reputed one of the best of the Roman Emperors; at a very early period of life he gave promise of uncommon excellence; and throughout his reign he distinguished himself as an able and accomplished monarch. But he was proud, pedantic, and self-sufficient; and, like every other individual destitute of spiritual enlightenment, his character presented the most glaring inconsistencies; for he was at once a professed Stoic, and a devout Pagan. This Prince could not brook the contempt ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... hand, and a looking-glass in the other. Droll combination!— you will exclaim. But it is of the ABBE RIVE of whom I now speak; the very Ajax flagellifer of the bibliographical tribe, and at the same time the vainest and most self-sufficient. He seems, amidst all the controversy in which he delighted to be involved, to have always had one never-failing source of consolation left:—that of seeing himself favourably reflected— from the recollection of his past performances—in the mirror of his ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... Jesus, Go and do thou likewise." Through the self-sufficient Jewish theologian the command is addressed to us. The direct form of the injunction intimates, what might be gathered from the nature of the case, that this parable is more strictly an example than a symbol. It does not convey spiritual ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... entirely reverses the scale. His pity is reserved for outcasts, His harshest words are addressed to those whom the world calls good. Folly He views with infinite compassion—the foolish man is as a lost sheep whose very helplessness invokes our pity. But for the man of hard and self-sufficient nature, whose very righteousness is a mixture of prudence and egoism, He has only words of flame. An offense against virtue counts for less with Him than an offense against love. No wonder the Pharisees called Him a blasphemer! ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson

... to a parasite which is nourished as a part of the human frame without contributing directly to its inner economy; it is securely housed in the topmost story, and there leads a self-sufficient and independent life. In the same way it may be said that a man endowed with great mental gifts leads, apart from the individual life common to all, a second life, purely of the intellect. He devotes himself to the constant increase, rectification ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer

... Little O'Grady had cried upon learning of all this, "why won't you be fair and above-board? Why will you be so secretive, so self-sufficient? Why didn't you tell me it was Roscoe Orlando Gibbons who had ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller

... boys and be off with you!" said Susan, over the hour-old baby, to Billy, who had come flying home in mid-morning. "Now I feel like David Copperfield's landlady, 'at last I have summat I can love!' Oh, the mistakes that you WON'T make, Jo!" she apostrophized the baby. "The smart, capable, self-sufficient ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris

... and from the Bible he obtains also the most comprehensive and satisfying view of the Deity and of man's relation to Him. He there finds that what he has to believe concerning God is, that He is Jehovah—the Being infinitely and eternally perfect, self-existent, and self-sufficient; the only living and true God, there being none beside Him. The heathen believed in and worshipped many gods. The untutored savage peopled the groves with them, and the pagan philosopher built innumerable temples ...
— Exposition of the Apostles Creed • James Dodds

... to Friedemann. He judged him, he could not long take pleasure in this vulgar bantering wit: his mockery and perpetual denial became irritating before long and he felt the impotence of it all: but it did soothe his exasperation with the self-sufficient stupidity of the Philistines. While he heartily despised his companion, Christophe could not do without him. They were continually seen together sitting with the unclassed and doubtful people of Friedemann's acquaintance, who were even more worthless than himself. They used to play, and ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... "I hate the very sight of a wasp-waisted, self-sufficient Prussian subaltern. They're everywhere. Imperial arrogance seems to pervade even their beer gardens." His voice trailed off into silence again, as in a preoccupied manner his finger wandered over the map. It stopped suddenly as he leaned closer to study the pink plot on which it rested. "Krovitch; ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton

... territory is ample; it includes every variety of climate, in the changing seasons, every variety of physical conformation, every kind of production suited to the wants, almost everything desired in the imagination, of man. It comes nearer than any empire in history to being self-sufficient, physically independent of the rest of the globe. That is to say, if it were shut off from the rest of the world, it has in itself the material for great comfort and civilization. And it has the elements of motion, of agitation, of life, because the vast territory is filling up with a rapidity ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... thing," remarked young Trelyon. "There's a picture I've seen of the heir coming of age—he's a horrid, self-sufficient young cad, but never mind—and it seems to be a day of general jollification. Can't I give a present to somebody? Well, I'm going to give it to a young lady who never cares for anything but what she can give away again to somebody else; and it is—well, it is—Why don't ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various

... whole line, and fell back on Nashville and Island No. Ten, and to the Memphis & Charleston Railroad. Everybody was anxious to help. Boats passed up and down constantly, and very soon arrived the rebel prisoners from Donelson. I saw General Buckner on the boat, he seemed self-sufficient, and thought their loss was not really so serious to their cause as ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... the faults which, if no inherent, will naturally be acquired by those who are too early entrusted with power. He was self-sufficient, arbitrary, and passionate. His good qualities consisted in a generous disposition, a kindness of heart when not irritated, a manly courage, and a frank acknowledgment of his errors. Had he been allowed to serve a proper time in the various grades ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... not reproduce in detail the rest of the matters set forth by Lady Claire Standish while she and the detective watched each other at Marseilles. Tiler, on the Saturday morning, made it plain, from his arrogance and self-sufficient air as he walked through the hotel restaurant, that all was going well, and he had indeed heard from Falfani that he would arrive with Lord ...
— The Passenger from Calais • Arthur Griffiths

... heavy dependence on foreign grants and technical assistance. Agriculture, including fishing, hunting, and forestry, contributes 40% to GDP, employs 80% of the labor force, and provides most of the exports. The country is not self-sufficient in food production; rice, the main staple, accounts for the bulk of imports. The government - which is hampered by internal political disputes - is struggling to upgrade education and technical training, privatize commercial ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... 50% of GDP (including fishing and forestry); the major cash crop is cocoa; other principal crops - rice, coffee, cassava, peanuts, corn, shea nuts, timber; normally self-sufficient in food ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... the human body as a self-sufficient machine whose brain generates thought. But the savage has a completely evolved physical body with eyes, ears and other organs like our own. His brain under the microscope shows no trace of difference in its material constitution from the ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers

... easy task, for I plainly saw that she did not quite approve of me. When I was first introduced to her, she looked at me with her great, steady blue eyes, as if analyzing me to the very boots, and evidently set me down as a somewhat arrogant and self-sufficient young fellow who needed a judicious course of discipline to teach him humility. I was generally self-possessed and had no little confidence in myself, but I confess that I was embarrassed in her ...
— That Mother-in-Law of Mine • Anonymous



Words linked to "Self-sufficient" :   self-sufficing, self-sufficiency, independent



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